Przeworski, Democracy and the Market.

Democracy

How does Przeworski define democracy?

democracy is a system in which parties lose elections. there are parties: divisions of interests, values, and opinions. there is competition, organized by rules. there are periodic winners and losers.

What is contestation?

Contestation means political forces with conflicting interests can actually compete for political power under established rules. For Przeworski, genuine contestation is essential for identifying democracy.

What does “government pro tempore” mean?

Democratic government is temporary government. Winners receive political authority, but they do not permanently eliminate losers. Losers retain their ability to compete again.

Why is uncertainty important for her definition of democracy?

Political actors cannot know beforehand exactly who will win democratic competition. Democracy only works as genuine competition if no political force can know or control the outcome in advance. No probabilities of 1 or 0. if outcomes were not uncertain there would be no reason to compete

EX - the presidential election in Algeria 1999, 7 candidates, 6 dropped out the night before because they knew the 7 would win because the military already decided he would

What is compliance?

Compliance means accepting democratic outcomes, including defeat, and continuing to pursue your interests through democratic institutions rather than trying to overturn the result or destroy the system.

What is noncompliance?

The important form of noncompliance occurs when organized political actors attempt to overturn democratic outcomes after they have occurred or behave in ways that seriously undermine other actors' confidence in democratic institutions.

What is democratization according to Przeworski?

Democratization occurs when political interests and conflicts become subject to competitive rules whose outcomes no group can simply override.

Power shifts from being controlled by a particular group to being governed by institutions and rules.

What does Przeworski mean by the “devolution of power”?

Democratization requires rulers or powerful groups to surrender their ability to dictate political outcomes and instead accept rules that can produce outcomes they do not control.

Why do losers comply in a democracy?

Losers comply because democracy gives them a future opportunity to win.

2 factors of uncertainty

1) voting is a decentralized process - individual act, this generates uncertainty

2) strategic voting - you can change your vote in light of what you think others will do

why comply with electoral outcomes?

1) cost benefit assessment

• consequences for noncompliance, this applies only to you

2) value commitment

• value is the fact that you want democracy to be around

3) coercion

• third party can punish

• Two parties agree not to run dirty campaigns. Each party would actually benefit from attacking the other. A Fair Elections Commission threatens punishment for breaking the agreement, so the parties comply.

4) equilibrium situation

• no actor has an incentive to deviate from custom given the expectations of what others will do, assumes parties think about what is in their benefit given the behaviors of other actors

• ex- military example

What is democratic consolidation?

Democracy is consolidated when all relevant political forces accept democratic institutions as the framework through which they will pursue their interests.

Even after losing, they want to compete again rather than overthrow the system.

Consolidated democracy = losing does not make you quit democracy.

how do / how should democracies provide for viability?

1) fair institutions

• democratic institutions should provide all parties with the probability that they may win in the future

• in order for democracy to be viable it needs to be fair

2) role of institutions - structural temporal design

• institutions effect chances of winning and therefore effect how people relate to the future

• key condition for democratic viability

• “some institutions under certain conditions offer to the relevant political forces a prospect of eventually advancing their interests that is sufficient to incite them to comply with immediately unfavorable outcomes”

3) economic welfare

• prospect of increasing ones welfare

What does “self-enforcing democracy” mean?

Democracy will evoke generalized compliance, it will be self enforcing, when all the relevant political forces have some specific minimum probability of doing well under the system of institutions

Why do institutions matter for Przeworski?

Institutions determine the rules under which political actors compete and provide mechanisms for punishing noncompliance.

Different institutions can therefore create different political outcomes even when voters behave similarly.

How do Adolfo Suárez and Roh Tae-Woo demonstrate the importance of institutions?

Przeworski points out that Adolfo Suárez's party in Spain and Roh Tae-Woo in South Korea both received 35 percent of the vote in their respective first democratic elections, but their institutional environments produced different outcomes.

Adolfo Suárez operated in a parliamentary system:

• He had to construct a coalition to form a government.

• His ability to stay in office depended on maintaining sufficient political support.

Roh Tae-Woo operated in a presidential system:

• He received a fixed five-year presidential term.

• He could govern during that period despite short-term fluctuations in political support.

Exam significance:
The same percentage of votes can produce different political consequences because institutions determine how votes translate into political authority.

How does the traffic-light example explain democratic compliance?

Przeworski compares democratic rules to traffic lights.

Imagine drivers approaching an intersection. A driver facing a red light might prefer to move immediately, but doing so risks collision. The driver waits because other drivers are expected to obey the rules as well.

The traffic signal determines:

• Who advances now.

• Who must wait.

• When today's loser can eventually proceed.

Democracy works similarly.

Political forces sometimes have to wait after losing an election or political conflict. But unlike permanent exclusion, democracy promises that they will have future opportunities to compete.

Exam significance:
The analogy demonstrates how rules and future expectations can make compliance rational even when actors dislike the immediate result.

Easy way to remember:
Red light = political loss.
Green light = political victory.

Why does Przeworski reject democracy as simply a social contract?

A contract requires some external authority capable of enforcing it. But democratic government cannot ultimately depend upon an independent authority standing above everyone else and forcing them to obey.

Democratic stability must therefore ultimately become self-enforcing.

Why is civilian control of the military important for democratic consolidation?

The military is particularly important because it may have an outside option unavailable to ordinary political actors: using force to subvert democracy.

Democratic consolidation therefore depends partly on whether military actors see accepting democratic outcomes as preferable to intervention.

Przeworski calls the institutional framework of civilian control over the military a particularly important point of democratic consolidation.

Example:
Przeworski describes a situation in which a civilian government anticipates that interfering with military interests could trigger a coup. If the government does not interfere, the military remains in the barracks.

Exam significance:
Not every political actor has the same capacity to subvert democracy. Therefore, institutions must account for differences in political power.

In that specific example, the civilian government chooses not to “tinker” with the military because it anticipates that doing so could provoke a coup. In response, the military stays in the barracks rather than intervening.

So the logic is:

Government interferes with military → risk of coup
Government leaves military alone → military stays in barracks

What is Przeworski's overall theory of democratic stability?

Democracy inevitably produces winners and losers because political interests cannot always be reconciled.

Yet losers may rationally accept defeat because democratic institutions give them future opportunities to compete and potentially win.

Democracy becomes consolidated when all relevant political forces conclude that continuing to compete within democratic institutions is better than attempting to subvert them.

Therefore:

Political conflict → uncertainty → winners and losers → future opportunities → compliance → democratic consolidation.

How would you answer an essay asking why democracy survives despite producing losers?

Thesis: Przeworski argues that democracy survives not because political conflict disappears or because everyone morally accepts democratic outcomes, but because democratic institutions transform conflict into repeated competition. Political actors accept unfavorable outcomes today when institutions provide sufficient opportunities to advance their interests tomorrow. Democracy becomes consolidated when all relevant political forces conclude that remaining within the uncertain democratic game is preferable to subverting it. [Przeworski.... 1-34 (1) | PDF]

Examples to use:

1. Traffic-light analogy → explains why temporary losers wait.

2. Suárez vs. Roh Tae-Woo → institutions shape the meaning of victory and defeat.

3. Military/coup example → some actors possess stronger alternatives to democratic compliance.

4. Presidentialism vs. parliamentarism → institutions can change how costly losing is. [Przeworski.... 1-34 (1) | PDF]